


Matsukawa Issei Contemplates Existence

by perennials



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, vroom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 19:39:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19448200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennials/pseuds/perennials
Summary: "Are you gonna stop staring at my mouth, or do I have to tell you that it’s making me feel oddly self-conscious despite the fact that I’ve known you for three years and you do this kind of shit all the time?"





	Matsukawa Issei Contemplates Existence

Fifteen minutes before their last exam of high school starts, Hanamaki tears open a mini-pack of m&ms. “The sugar rush keeps me awake,” he says by way of explanation, when Issei raises an eyebrow from across the table.

There are other ways to get a sugar rush, Issei muses beneath a haze of trigonometric identities and blurred out faces. Cosine square what again? He nods in understanding.

“Don’t worry, I’ll throw my spare eraser at you if you look like you’re gonna fall asleep,” he says. Issei is always reassuring, if nothing else.

Hanamaki laughs at him for something like the seventh time this morning, because according to Hanamaki laughing at Issei is one of his favorite things to do. Hanamaki has a lot of favorite things. He likes cream puffs and cat naps, and pissing off Oikawa until his smile begins to shoot off sparks like a killer in a second-rate horror film. He likes cream puffs and putting maple syrup on his chicken nuggets, and making people turn around mid-walk so he can poke their cheek with his finger. To reiterate: he likes cream puffs.

Issei also has a lot of favorite things, but mathematics is definitely not one of them. He could probably name a few, but he slept at half past four last night after getting distracted thinking about trigonometric identities and the way Hanamaki had leaned over him during lunch break the other day to point at an ant, exposing the nape of his neck within three scant centimeters of Issei’s crumbling restraint.

“Look, Mattsun. An ant.”

_ I could care less about your fucking ant,  _ Issei thought. “I see,” he said.

“I wonder where he’s going.”

“Not to Osaka, that’s for sure.”

After which Hanamaki had pulled away from being essentially pressed flush against the front of Issei’s uniform so he could give him a Look. Considering how long they had been friends, Issei generally knew how to read Hanamaki Looks. But he could not tell what this one meant.

Back in the classroom before their last exam of high school begins, Hanamaki gives him another cryptic, lidded glance, and then turns to face the front of the classroom. Issei doesn’t know what this one means, either.

  
  


//

  
  


Matsukawa Issei has no idea where he’s going. He reads an article one night about how there are only eleven years left until global warming becomes irreversible and the planet embarks on a glorious one-way journey to hell, and then lies in bed for three hours wondering if he should catch a flight to Okinawa and then lie on a beach there for the rest of his life instead of going to college. The idea appeals to him the way students always contemplate dropping out of school the night before a particularly awful test. In a similar vein, he understands with a sober touch of sadness that he cannot actually do that. Although he would like to.

Technically Matsukawa Issei is going to a college with a flourishing arts program in Osaka, but to be frank, he has no idea where he’s going. He walks into a convenience store on Sunday morning and then squats in front of the dessert display, staring dully at the array of puddings, souffle cheesecakes, cream puffs. The white lights installed in the display ceiling make a faint buzzing sound. He thinks about dismantling them.

“Violent.” Hanamaki squats down beside him and proceeds to stare at the same dessert display with a similar intensity, only after half a minute he extends a heavy hand and closes his fist around the cream puff from earlier. Gently. But with finality.

“Hey.”

Hanamaki stands up. “Are you buying anything?”

Issei shakes his head, and then follows him to the cashier.

  
  


//

  
“What happens after volleyball?” Issei asked Oikawa Tooru one evening. Practice had just ended, and the first-years were roving the gymnasium picking up volleyballs and hurling them back into the cart while competing with each other for accuracy points. Oikawa had been in the middle of throwing his head of glossy, slightly sweaty hair back. He paused mid-throw.

“Whatever happens after volleyball,” Oikawa replied cryptically, sounding absurdly pleased with himself. Barely a second later Iwaizumi materialized at his side like a specter with a little too much stage presence and yanked him towards the open door, through which a single rectangle of orange light flooded in.

“You are full of so much shit,” Iwaizumi could be heard in the distance, growling slightly under his breath, but Issei knew he was going to kiss that same shit-spouting mouth later under the sullen red crown of fall, and Oikawa was going to look absurdly pleased with himself again, and they would disappear from practice like that, half an hour after the rest of the team had left.

He hoped they would be happy, regardless of their living arrangements. Oikawa had a point.

  
  


//

  
  


He used to have cram school on Sunday mornings, eight o’clock sharp with his notebooks and his spare eraser and his head essentially falling off of his neck from lack of inspiration. “For what?” His deskmate, Kenji, would ask, spinning his pen in that way that they all thought was cool when they were kids but had now accepted to simply be part of the boredom-burning nature of the later teenage years. Kenji was very good at spinning pens. He could do so with both his hands, on virtually any two fingers except his pinky, and with any kind of writing instrument, barring the scalpel. Which wasn’t really a writing instrument anyway, but Issei always thought it would be cool if he tried.

“For life,” Issei would reply then, perfectly serious. Kenji had a cute smile and was serially good at chemistry, and Issei hoped he would have a good life at Todai. Somehow.

Now that college entrance exams and their last exam of high school and high school itself are over, Issei’s Sundays are free. Blank spaces on grid paper are oddly unsettling. He hadn’t been expecting to meet Hanamaki at the convenience store, either, so that’s equally unsettling, but the closest park is thirty minutes away on foot, so as Hanamaki (gently) rips into the plastic around his cream puff, they cross the street and begin to walk.

Hanamaki walks with a slight slouch, the way a lot of tall people do. He holds the cream puff loosely in its plastic wrapping and walks with a slight slouch, his brown v-neck half-tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He takes a bite of his cream puff. He does this again. His Adam’s apple bobs.

“So,” Hanamaki starts after they’ve turned onto the next street, which Issei is about sixty-percent sure is the one they should be on, judging by the uncanny number of pet stores pressed together on the opposite street and the restaurant with the huge full-color katsudon advertisement pinned up next to its entrance. “Are you gonna stop staring at my mouth, or do I have to tell you that it’s making me feel oddly self-conscious despite the fact that I’ve known you for three years and you do this kind of shit all the time?” He smiles at Issei, lopsided.

Caught red-handed, Issei does not falter. He does not falter so hard that he misses the red man sign and almost gets hit by an oncoming white Toyota. Thank god for Hanamaki, who yanks on the hem of his shirt with vigor, sending Issei stumbling backwards into him. By the time Issei’s reclaimed his balance from the cruel hands of fate, Hanamaki has tears in his eyes. Dramatic.

“You’re the best,” he says, wiping at the corner of his eye. Issei resists the urge to sigh and leans against the railing at the edge of the street, trying to look cool. Hanamaki’s nice, though, because he’s Hanamaki, so he lets it go and is the first to step onto the zebra crossing, this time when the stupid man with his stupid hat is shining green. Issei trails after him, and Hanamaki slows his pace so he can catch up. They proceed across town like this, two tall figures shrouded by blitzy afternoon sun and leaf-shadows, almost perfectly in step, but not quite.

  
  


//

  
  


He figured about a week later that Hanamaki had probably leaned over him and talked about the ant on purpose, and that there probably had been no ant there to begin with, and was correct.

  
  


//

  
  


By the time they reach the park, Hanamaki’s cream puff has been decimated. Ever prepared, he produces a pack of mini m&ms from his pocket and opens that, too. He sits down on the swing seat that’s a little too small for him, and Issei takes the other. He has to fold his knees under his legs to keep himself from standing up by accident. Strangely, he feels the child inside of him leaving.

“M&ms again,” Issei observes rather flatly, at the same time at which Hanamaki says  _ I’m staying in Miyagi. _

“Oh—” Issei swallows air.

Hanamaki peers into his m&ms. He looks like he’s not really sure what to do with himself, his face flat and his brows slightly knitted, but eventually appears to reach some kind of conclusion, as he plucks a bright red m&m out of the pack and bites it in half. The cut is far from clean. A little fragment of candied m&m shell attaches itself to his upper lip, and slyly remains there.

“Staring,” Hanamaki murmurs, looking like he always does. Like the world’s just flouncing by outside his bedroom window and he’s waving it goodbye, all of it, the kids with their dirt-crusted nails and the dogs with their silver name tags and the volleyballs, the years spent with the volleyballs, the boys who held those volleyballs and hit them and cried for them. The boys who are leaving them behind. But Issei knows Hanamaki’s not that cold, just faintly cynical because it works well for him and keeps the cicadas away in the summer. Issei knows him too well.

Issei shrugs. His knees are going to cramp up soon. He stands up.

“Where are you going?” Hanamaki asks him as he heads to the seesaw, plants his ass on one end just so he can watch the other seat shoot sharply into the sky.

“Not where the ant’s going.”

“Thanks, that was helpful.”

Hanamaki stands up too and walks over. He’s facing Issei now, but the board of the seesaw’s in the way so he has to stand awkwardly to the side, angling himself slightly so he can look Issei in the eye. Behind him, the sky is starting to turn like a bruise. It’s the kind of high-saturation spectacle that he knows is going to end up on one too many social media profiles. Somewhere in the country, Oikawa is definitely opening up his phone camera.

There’s a look in Hanamaki’s eye again, one of those Hanamaki Looks, only for the third time in his life Issei can’t tell for shit what it means. What does Hanamaki Takahiro want? That’s a hard question for anyone, least of all Matsukawa Issei, who’s eighteen years old and tall enough to make traffic lights swoon, and has no idea where the fuck he’s going. It’s hard to make out the expression on his face fully since he’s backlit by the pretty Instagram sky behind him, but between the orange and blue and purple Issei can see faint bags under his eyes. Distantly, he wonders if Hanamaki had stumbled across the same article online, about global warming and the apocalypse. He’ll ask about it later.

“Could you—” Issei gestures his hands uncertainly. “Come a bit closer.”

Hanamaki leans in. The air thrums.

“Osaka’s really fucking far from Miyagi,” Issei tells him.

Hanamaki looks at him dryly. “I know.”

“Do you, really.”

“Yes, you asshole,” Hanamaki says with a smile that’s so crooked it looks like hurt, simple as that, and then bends down and slides a hand up to Issei’s cheek and kisses him. He’s still standing awkwardly to one side of the seesaw, and Issei has the self-awareness to feel bad for one earth-shattering moment before he’s too busy dragging Hanamaki towards him to care, clinging to his skin like there are fucking stars hidden beneath them, like Hanamaki’s got the answer to global warming between his teeth. There’s so much distance he has to close. All nine hundred and twenty-two kilometers. He looked it up on Google maps.

Hanamaki kisses slow and unsteady and tastes like sugar, and Issei’s kind of fucking losing it. He’s going to die. He gives up on being cool and classy and reassuring; he’ll just settle for dying.

  
  


//

  
  


“What happens after this?” Issei fishes the last m&m out of the mini pack in Hanamaki’s hands. It’s green and slightly deformed.  


“Whatever you want to happen.”

“That didn’t answer anything. You’re almost as bad as Oikawa.”

Hanamaki smiles at him cryptically. “I learned only from the best.” Then he kisses him again and takes the fucking m&m right out of Issei’s mouth, so Issei runs out of things to complain about, at least for now.

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/nikiforcvs) or [tumblr](http://corpsentry.tumblr.com/)
> 
> matsuhana was actually the first pairing that interested me when i got back into hq last june after a 4 year hiatus. the first chunk about m&ms was written then and promptly forgotten about, and while procrastinating on studying for midterms (now it's history on thursday; i got fucked by lit today, not that anyone wants to know, but lit fucked me hard) i discovered this in my google doc graveyard, finished it in one sitting, and now it's here. i'm glad i finally got to explore their dynamic after a whole ass year-- i like their subtlety. i am gloriously pretentious.
> 
> anyway, thank you for reading! if you liked it feel free to kudo or comment or whatever, i appreciate it.
> 
> have a good one
> 
> p.s.  
> matsukawa had not bitten into the m&m before hanamaki vacuum cleaner-ed it out of his mouth


End file.
